May 2017

05/25/2017

For those of you who attended my webcast of “What’s New in Vault 2018”, thank you for attending. We had a great turnout, and based on the questions asked, a very attentive audience. I have always tried to instill in my colleagues the idea that you can’t know everything, and so it’s okay to say “I don’t know the answer to that question”, but you should always follow that up with “but, I will try to find an answer for you”. This is the basis for my blog article, and let me first apologize to those of you who asked questions and got my response of “I don’t know the answer to that question”, but don’t see your question answered here. I tried to note those questions that I couldn’t answer, but I know I missed a few. I am following up with answers to those I recorded and ask that you comment on this blog with any questions that you did not get answered. I will get responses back to this blog article as quickly as possible.

As I mentioned, there were many great questions asked. I’m sure some of you were probably disappointed with the responses where the new features didn’t support your particular need. Several of these new features are truly ‘new’, and as such are the first effort to provide the feature. I think we all can appreciate that an inspiration comes to us, we design a solution, and find that the solution fits the need okay. We then begin talking with others and realize there can be many ‘what if’ situations that we could require an alternate approach. Another consideration is that we have an inspiration, begin developing a solution, and realize that we have a deadline to deliver the solution. What are the most important features to include? What should we start with, considering that we can expand the usage in version 2.0 to cover these other situations? I am sure that we will likely see these features enhanced in future versions of Vault.

For those of you with suggestions, I am including the link at the end of the article to the Autodesk Vault Ideas Forum. I use the forum to submit suggestions, many coming from people like yourselves, for enhancements to vault. You are welcome to submit your own suggestions (please first search the forum to see if someone else has suggested it earlier). I also suggest that you look through the submissions and vote for those suggestions you find useful. Autodesk will review the submissions and the votes tallied for each when considering the next year’s enhancements.

It is time to answer questions. I noted the following questions and researched the answers. As mentioned above, if you have additional questions, please submit them as comments to this article, and I will make every effort to get them answered.

Question 1: Are PDFs generated when using items?

Although the functionality appears to be available within the item lifecycle definition, currently this only works within file lifecycles. I have confirmed this with Autodesk. This could be a great enhancement request.

Question 2: Does Plant3D support the ‘Place into CAD’ command similar to Inventor?

I thought I would test this with AutoCAD drawings. While I did see the ‘Place into CAD’ command available to me, and I could execute it, I would see the processing dialog box, followed by an error that the function could not find an application to go with this document. This seemed to indicate that this only applies to Inventor components being placed into Inventor. I did check with Autodesk on this and confirmed that the current design of the feature only supports Inventor.

Question 3: Is the PDF revision synchronized with the source drawing?

Yes it is. I tested a released drawing at Rev ‘A’. I started a change, which incremented the revision value to ‘B’. I then manually incremented the revision to ‘E’, and released the drawing. After the property syncing and PDF creation ran through the job processor, I found the PDF was updated and its revision property is now set to ‘E’.

Drawing state changed to Work in Progress:

Manually incremented the revision to ‘E’:

Released the drawing and allowed the job processor to run:

Lastly, where can I find the Vault forums? There are two forums available for vault. The first is used by many to submit questions or problems with the current line of products. The second is the Ideas forum, to submit enhancement requests.

05/19/2017

There are times when a complete digital prototype is more work than it’s worth. This last while, I have been building quite a few things out of broken down pallet wood. Because the pieces are full of nails, I often can’t cut exactly where my Inventor plans call for a cut. So I end up deviating from the plan almost immediately. What I really need is just a simple layout with some rough dimensions to get the ball rolling. I have found AutoCAD is just the ticket for these project. After only a few minutes in the software I’m ready to hit the shop. And when I’m building for someone else, these drawings are usually enough to get sign off on the project.

The following are a few of my past pallet projects where I was able to make use of simple layouts inside AutoCAD and then jump straight into the shop. Since I know all my base dimensions, I end with very few bad cuts and zero wasted wood. I’ll start with my most recent project. I made these for my wife for Mother’s Day. Only about 15 minutes in AutoCAD and 3 hours in the shop and I was done.

A few other times I have found AutoCAD useful is when I put together some barn doors for our church. So far I have made three different sets. Each with a different pattern. I really don’t need to know the exact dimension of each part. All I really need is a simple layout. So back to AutoCAD for a simple layout. I had this rail made locally so it was included in my layout for overall dimensions.

On this one I added a bit more detail and was able to get a manual count of boards needed. And it was good enough to get approval on the design. No need for fancy renderings, etc. it’s just a barn door right. My goal here is to get back into the shop as quick as possible.

That’s right… I found some 9’ long pallets.

Here again is a simple display stand project with the layout all done in AutoCAD. It was also out of the 9’ pallets I broke apart. Really all I needed was the overall dimensions and the rest I could figure out as it went together. Because each pieces has a slightly different thickness, you can run into problems cutting everything at once and then trying to fit them together.

I have also made a number of signs using AutoCAD. I’ve been projecting the AutoCAD screen directly onto the boards to trace the letters I need to cut out. (some of us don’t have CNC machines… yet) AutoCAD's Arc Aligned Text is a tool on the Express tab. Make sure you include the Express Tools when installing AutoCAD. There are a lot of useful tools on that tab that many users miss.

Because AutoCAD is so fast and easy to use, it is the way to go when planning layouts and concepts. Sometimes a quick layout is all you really need for these quick one-off project.

05/15/2017

We all know how important the browser is. Because you can do so many tasks from the browser it just as important that the actual graphics model for efficiency and productivity. Inventor 2018 gives this valuable tool a new look and functionality.

Because it can display a much larger array of controls covering more aspects of design you will first notice it has a new name. If you should lose the panel you once referred to as the “Browser”, you will now find it is called “Model” and it can be activated from the “User Interface” command under the View tab.

A number of panels have been added that can be displayed either over top of the “Model” panel or as completely independent panels including: iLogic, Vault, Favorites, Electrical Catalog Browser, and Representations. The Electrical Catalog Browser and the Representations panels only apply to assembly models and these panels may be activated by selecting “User Interface” or by left clicking the “+” on the top of one of the visible panels and selecting from the pop up list.

All the panels can be detached and become a floating panel or be nested to the side of the Inventor screen. It is also possible to drag panels to a second monitor freeing up space in the graphics window. To detach a panel, left click and drag on the panel name (the shaded area at the top of each panel) to the area you want. Panels will even nest to each other simply by dragging one until you see the blue line appear and releasing the left mouse button. Panels can be nested on top of each other with a left mouse click on the title to activate as shown below. (If you want to prevent nesting while dragging a panel to a new location, hold down the Ctrl key).

Each panel has a variety of sub-commands and functions located just below the panel name which vary depending on the active Inventor file. The “Model” panel has the familiar “Assembly” and “Modeling” display functions in an assembly environment.

The “iLogic” panel has the tabs for local and external rules and forms which were found in the iLogic browser in past Inventor versions.

The “Favorites” panel features a drop-down list of your pre-configured Content Center favorites. These are best managed from the Content Center Editor. It also includes folder and view controls as well as the Content Center filter control.

The “Vault” panel contains the following tools.

A – Refresh Vault Status

B – Update Properties

C – Filter (panel view)

D – Vault Log In control, Log In status, Vault Client control

E – Choose Properties (Vault properties to display, the current display is Vault Revision Level and a custom property named Finish).

The “Electrical Catalog Browser” panel is normally used in the Inventor Electromechanical environment to select and edit electrical components from the primary or secondary AutoCAD Electrical component database. If this panel will be used for editing the database, it is advisable to detach and expand it to provide adequate viewing.

The “Representations” panel is used to show and manage positional representations of an assembly model.

One of the best new features is the “Search” ability within both the “Model” and “Vault” panels. Currently neither search feature supports Windows wildcard characters or Boolean search strings such as and, or and not but it will find partial strings if you are not sure of the complete name.

Searching within the “Model” panel will find entries by the name contained in the panel including:

Part and assembly names

Constraints by name

Work features by name

iProperties of parts and sub-assemblies

If the search is for an iProperty value, the component containing the iProperty is shown along with the matching iProperty. The example below shows a partial word search “manufactu” and a number of components containing that string are displayed. Hovering over the iProperty symbol beside a part reveals the two iProperty entries containing the search criteria.

The search for Vault Properties in the “Vault” panel requires a bit of configuration before executing. The Vault property names you want to search on must be “declared” or made visible in the panel and this is done using the “Choose Properties” command described earlier.

Left mouse click on this command to display a list of all current Vault properties, including custom ones, created by your company. Select the property name from the left panel and add it to the right panel to display it in the panel and make it searchable.

If you miss the “Find” command (Binoculars icon) you used in all the past versions of Inventor, you will still find it by left clicking the three horizontal bars icon on the right side of the “Model” panel.

I will leave you with a little trick new to Inventor 2018 - Right click on the main graphic display and select the “Measure” command from the Marking Menu. Now left click and drag the Measure dialog box onto a panel. It will be added and will remain until the command is ended. It will again re-appear as a panel if the Measure command is selected.

Thanks, have fun and enjoy the new “browser” functionality with Inventor 2018!

05/09/2017

Sometimes we want to make changes to our iLogic rules but we do not necessarily want the rule to run after making these changes. In earlier releases of Inventor, the Rule Editor only has two buttons, OK and Cancel (see image below).

If you click OK, the rule will run immediately. If you click Cancel, you would lose the changes you made to the rule. Below are a few workarounds that can be used to save your changes in releases prior to 2017 and which one to use depends on your circumstances:

If you are okay with the rule running but you know that the rule will cause an error:

You can click OK and rule will run

When error pops up, accept the error

The IDE will pop open again

Click Cancel. (Don’t worry, the changes you made will be saved)

If you do not want the rule to run immediately:

Go to the Options tab of the Rule Editor

Click the Suppressed check box (see image below)

Click OK

In the Rules tab of the iLogic Browser, right click on the rule and Unsuppress it.

As of Inventor 2017, there were changes made to the iLogic Rule Editor that make it a little easier to edit rules, specifically, we now have the Save button.

The Save button will save your rule and close the Rule Editor without running the rule. The Save & Run button does what OK used to, closes the Rule Editor and runs the rule.

“Give a man a program, frustrate him for a day. Teach a man to program, frustrate him for a lifetime.” - Waseem Latif

05/02/2017

The 3D annotations in Inventor 2018 allow you to place GD&T on your model instead of only placing it on your drawing file. This can be accomplished by using the Tolerance Feature command in the Annotate Tab.

The GD&T annotations in Inventor 2018 do leave a little to be desired when compared with the GD&T available when creating a drawing. Being able to include the correct GD&T in the Model Based Definitions can prevent errors when translating to a 2D drawing. This post will likely be edited as updates are made to the GD&T annotations.